Guest Post: Reflections on my Ordination and Ordination in General

Below is a letter sent by my friend Mike.  He's writing to communicate his approach (and struggle) in the ordination process of the TBC.  I think he achieves clarity.  

I've always been impressed with Mike's ability to medititate, he's got good posture, doesn't move.  I wiggle and fidget, struggle with posture.  So to see him meditate is awesome, inspiring.  He's traveled around a bit, and see the movement outside the USA.  He's also a very authentic and honest man, and this letter is yet another example of his forthrightness.  The more I think about responding to this, the less I want to--I think it's grown on me, and I think it needs no response from me.  I think it's pretty awesome. 

Reflections on my Ordination and Ordination in General 

      For many years now I have been reflecting on, brooding over, and clarifying: why I want to be ordained?  And what are all of my reservations and resistance to ordination all about?  This compilation of reflections is not complete or definitive in that not much of anything is complete or definitive, but they are some of the key questions and points of clarification in this process for me as of late. 

      While most everything that ordination is said to stand for I feel whole heartedly behind in principle, I have had serious concerns about the spiritual benefits of having a label or a mark threshold that one crosses and then becomes what we call effectively going for refuge.  One of the potential pit falls of marking peoples effectivity with this label is that people can begin to rely on others to tell them what effective practice would look like, rather than having the individual study, meditate, and engage in dialog with others about what effective practice would look like in there lives.  I am not saying that people are not necessarily taking personal responsibility to some degree for sorting out what effective practice looks like in there own lives, but creating this system where you develop your practice and wait for someone to give you the stamp of approval can put too much of the emphasis on looking to other people to tell you what you should be doing.  I am sure that this can feel just as awkward for the prospective order member as it is for the order members involved in making the decision about someone readiness for ordination.  Over the years of going on GFR retreats I have seen a lot of people become too focused on what they need to do to get ordained rather than focusing on what they need to do to develop a more effective practice.

      The human tendency to attempt to reefy an identity while being blown around by the worldly winds is indeed very strong.  I feel that ordination can become just another way to firm up our sense of self and appropriate the dharma in a way that completely contradicts the teaching on see through a fixed sense of self.  While it seemed like I saw this type of spiritual materialism happening around me I was unaware that it was indeed having an effect on me as well until I had my first kula meeting two years ago.  Most of all the feed back that I got at this meeting was very encouraging, but there was a bit of a concern about the stability of my highs and lows in practice and I was not given the stamp of approval of being seen as ready for ordination.  A very painful psychic storm of the worldly winds fallowed this meeting.

      The strong emotional reactions that I had after this meeting made it very clear that I was not exempt from having some degree of spiritual materialism behind my intention to be ordained.  That as much as I wanted my ordination to not be about seeking some validation for who I was as an individual it was a part of what was happening.  This sent me into a long period of questioning whether or not it would be beneficial or not to be ordained.  Pretty quickly I decided it would be best to put the whole issue of whether or not I had crossed this threshold of effective practice aside and just focus more clearly on what I needed to do to develop spiritually.  This turned into a very productive time of developing confidence in my own commitment to the three jewels and clarifying my own intentions in practice.  It is arguable that witnessing my own spiritual materialism through the ordination process lead me into this place of developing confidence in my own commitment, but it is hard to say if this was not just bound to happen of its own accord.  I think there was also a certain cost involved in not being validated as effectively going for refuge sooner in that until your spiritual friends give you this validation to some degree this is a passive vote of no confidence.  These are the unescapable stakes of setting up the ordination process the way it has been, and I believe that these issues will be important to keep in mind when considering some ones readiness for ordination.  For me personally it has not felt helpful to get encouraging or critical feedback with someone standing over me with a stamp of approval. 

      Having recently reread Sangharakshita's definition of what effectively going for refuge is: I found that he essentially defines it with the word commitment, which I find to be a much more clear and inspiring way of looking at ones spiritual development.  I am however unsure about how possible it is to accurately say when someone has crossed this threshold of commitment to spiritual practice.  The conditions that are at play in ones life are vast and unfathomable and for some one else or one self to be able to clearly weigh these conditions and access whether they have crossed the threshold, it seems unlike that this could be done all that accurately.  Commitment to spiritual practices is of course something that is only done in real time, and all we can do is develop a growing understanding of the actions that we take of body, speech and mind that are committed and which are not.  I believe this would be a more helpful and beneficial way of framing the discussion around commitment to practice.

      Probably the part of ordination that I am most apprehensive about is potentially putting myself in a place where I have to access someone else's readiness for Ordination.  That said, I do think that it is possible to go through the Ordination process with more of the light and shadow aspects in view, and that a bit more emphasis on some of the potential shadow aspects that might crop up for people could be quiet helpful.  It does seem that some people are able to navigate this process without overtly glorify or idealizing ordination,  seeing the benefits without thinking that they have staked some claim to some type of attainment.  More open discussion about how much these issues may be at play for people in the ordination process may be enough to rectify some of these issues.  Continuing to down play the focus of the ordination process being about ordination I think would also be helpful.  This has happened some what over the last few years and it has made me feel more comfortable about the process.

      Now for some of the more positive reflection that I have had about ordination.  Ordination has the potential to be a beneficial act of the imagination through building up a connection between associations of lived spiritual commitment to the well fare of all beings, with this symbolic ritual act of being ordained.  But it is important for people to be clear that ordination has no inherent value and is only significant to the extent that it is significant in the mind of the person being ordained, and only as powerful as ones capacity to link their clarity of intention about what is valuable, with there lived experience through ones imagination.  My initial desire behind wanting to be ordained was set in motion by my response to hearing the stories about the life of the buddha.  The resonance with the Buddha's example was clearly then, as it is now, the most valuable thing that can be done with ones life energy.  It is an act of imagination how I turn this resonance into another living example of what the buddha discovered and taught.  Greedy, hatred, and delusion; generosity, love and wisdom this is the playing field of the conditions of my contingent self.  Am I committed? probably but no one can know for sure.  These are my associations with the significants of the private ordination.

      Though I have had my doubts about how beneficial certain courses of action within the order and by order members have been.  I have undoubtedly benefited great from the examples of some order members and through the friendships and communication that I have shared.  I intend to have my public ordination mark my solidarity with all of the fruitful interaction that have been, with all the fruitful interactions that now are, and with all the fruitful interactions that could be.  This is not to say that I intended to turn a blind eye to actions within the order that appear to me to be potentially harmful, but that I intend to focus most of my energy on ways of engaging that I believe to be most helpful and  beneficial.  Unless I feel like I have some constructive criticism that would be helpful I intend to not worry about actions that are taken within the order that I disagree with.  I hope to be able to give people the benefit of the doubt that they are engaging with practice in a way that makes the most sense to them given their conditions.  I hope to be able to skillfully offer my opinion and leave people to make the decision that seems appropriate to them.

      My final practical reason behind why I want to be ordained is because I want to be involved in the ongoing discussion about how to most effectively establish the dharma in our modern day context, and that I intend to play some part in sharing my understanding of the dharma with others in some form.  Being ordained I feel will help facilitate an engagement with the other people within the order which I hope will benefit myself and others.

      The clarity that has emerged around what I believe to be the value and potential hazards of ordination are the conditions that now allow me to more comfortably say that I am ready to be ordained.  Seeing the form of ordination like the forms of all things to be empty and the potential for the form of ordination to be an expression of the impermanent dynamic flow that is its emptiness, is as important as seeing the form of self to be empty without negating the value of that form.  This is the view that has given me peace of mind around the tension that I have held about the form of ordination.  It is a degree of insight that I hope to continue to apply to all the forms around me to further develop and strength my own peace of mind and the peace of mind of all beings.

Video

admitting mistakes

Early morning musings:


On page 43 of Allan Lokos' book Patience: The Art of Peaceful Living, the author reports that in a study of successful college students, the successful ones admit to making mistakes and working to overcome them.  If you didn't admit to mistakes, you're less likely to overcome them.


I think of psychoanalysts who present their competencies.  I think in the psychoanalytic world these things are changing, I can think of Bromberg's admission of a mistake in his last book.


I read a lovely interview by Monk's son, the drummer, who said that jazz is all about the recovery.  I've adopted that idea in my works as a psychoanalyst.  It's all about the recovery from mistakes.  Supposedly Kohut talked about recovery from empathic ruptures as being important, though I haven't gotten that far in The Restoration of the Self.


The TBC is led by a man who divulged mistakes while on the annual GFR retreat.  I really admire that about him.


(The chairman of the college of preceptors, who's only job is "yes" or "not yet" to whether people are to be let into the order, is not really in charge of the order, but holds the highest position in the order.  In a way it's really cool there is no pope in the TBC or over Buddhism in general.  Many people project the Dali Lama as the pope of Buddhism, and I'm pretty sure he's an awesome fellow.  But he is not the pope of Buddhism, he's only the leader of one of the many sects of Tibetan Buddhism.)


It's one of my strengths, that I can admit mistakes.  Actually I apologize too much, stemming from my schema of depravation and subjugation.  I remember rebuking a student worker at a job site rather harshly 15-20 years ago.  I apologized to him later.  I had a teacher telling me they felt bad saying "shut up," to a student the other day.  That reminds me of the advice a good friend gave me.  I was complaining that I lost it a lot as a parent.  He said, essentially Sangharakshita's point in his talk about parenting, that you know, you're "up against it."  No reason to expect perfection.  It was a very mettaful response.  I often offer the gift of kindness to those who I see are being overly harsh on themselves.


Another friendly acquaintance, suggested that my spiritual impatience was to be addressed by patience.  And that's what Allan Lakos is writing about in the unnumbered chapter in his interesting book.


I like it that he see patience as seeing things as they really are, and thus it can be very creative and not passive.  I suppose it's superficial to see virtues as superficial.  There is great depth and it's often said that if you take a Buddhist virtue to it's limit, it will take you all the way to enlightenment.


I like this book because I don't think I've read a whole book devoted to patience.  Just like Ratnaguna's book The Art of Reflection, which in a way was revolutionary in that it's the first book on reflection as a spiritual practice in Buddhism.  Bodhipaksa's book on the 6 Element practice was an awesome book in it's own way, and the first I know on that lovely practice.  He's led me through the practice on retreat when I had a deep experience.

spiritual death

Musings:

I've listened a few times to this talk.  And I watched the last Harry Potter the other day, where (spoiler alert) he has to die to be reborn.  And I think about the 6 Element practice, and my intense meditative experiences.  We have to die to be reborn.  I think about my recent revelation that you don't necessarily need a hand-off to a sadhana.  I was thinking about the fear of growing, how it's scary to be vulnerable.  I was thinking about my own security operations that take me away from unpleasant emotions--Netflix, video games, ETOH, cannabis.  Addiction is just another aspect of the flight, as my wonderful Anandi points out.  The fight to see reality as it really is, is a fight for everyone, not just people with schizophrenia. Procrastination, denial, lack of insight, lack of depth.  "looking for water from a deeper well," is the line from a song, I think Emmylou Harris did a cover of the original.  This relentless pushing to deepen and self discovery can be a bit annoying to others.  I put the petal to the metal.  Maybe as a friend suggested, I need patience, to let it unfold.  And yet, I want to die, so I can be reborn.

Shanger (United States of Tara dialogue)

From Episode 10 in season 2 of United States of Tara:

Older gay neighbor:  I was so full of shame and anger, that my therapist called it "shanger".  Is that what it feels like to you?

gay teen son of Tara:  I'd really rather not have to use the word "shanger".

video

This is the theme song for United States of Tara, and I love the lyric:  "I know we'll be just fine when we learn to love the ride."

Happy Valentine's Day

We have not long to love. (by Tennessee Williams)




We have not long to love.

Light does not stay.

The tender things are those

we fold away.

Coarse fabrics are the ones

for common wear.

In silence I have watched you

comb your hair.

Intimate the silence,

dim and warm.

I could but did not, reach

to touch your arm.

I could, but do not, break

that which is still.

(Almost the faintest whisper

would be shrill.)

So moments pass as though

they wished to stay.

We have not long to love.

A night. A day....

The World Is A Waiting Lover

"That was the beloved.  You've been saying all along that it's the seeking that's important, not the finding.  We never know when the Beloved will come, or even if, but that doesn't stop us from following
what calls to us.  You were following the Beloved that night.  And when you felt that joy at the end of your vigil, that was the Beloved coming to you."  (Trebbe Johnson reports her husband says this (to end her book, The World Is A Waiting Lover))

Revolutionize Your Soul

Maybe you can have all the things that you've ever dreamed of

Maybe you can drive your hummer down your gold plated streets with your dove
Of all the things you want to buy, how do they make you feel inside?
You won't find your light in the bargain bin
So you better start your path within and
revolutionize your soul
(revolutionize your soul)
What if you had never seen a skyscraper or a superstar
going up and down in an elevator never knowing who you are
Of all the things that you have seen
Do you even know where you have been?
Get up right now and look towards the light this may be your last chance to ignite and
Revolutionize your soul
Revolutionize your soul

(Susan Tedeschi off her CD Back To The River 2008)

Bhante and Nagabodhi video

Sangharakshita in Conversation- The FWBO from Clear Vision Trust on Vimeo.

Andres Lost His First Tooth

Lost Tooth!

They saw Tintin

Their medals for participation in basketball

I've decided to consolidate my efforts in blogging, moving my blog about my kids to this blog also because parenting is a deep part of my spiritual practice.  So is hiking in nature, but I'm going to leave that blog where it is.

Shamash Alidina video (2 min, 22 seconds)

I like the idea of smiling when you notice your mind has wandered.

quote from Mindfulness for Dummies

“Of the three ways of achieving satisfaction in life (pleasure, engagement and meaning) engagement and meaning are by far the most effective, and of the two, meaning has been found to have the most effect.” Shamash Alidina, p. 192

Disillusionment

We have a fantasy mind, that is important, but sometimes I don't know the difference between fantasy and reality.  We have to project our wishes onto the world, we couldn't even relate to each other if we didn't do that a little.  Manners and politeness is important.

I have a fantasy about sangha.  My hope is that everyone will be clean and pure and insightful, positive and helpful.  Sometimes that just isn't true.  We get disappointed, disillusioned.  Now if you like reality, then disillusionment is important.  I'm aware that I can eclipse the reality principle with the pleasure principle.  I want to see a certain reality and that helps prop up my fragile psyche.

Maybe sangha is forgetting offenses, overlooking unkindness or addressing it appropriately.  Maybe we can train each other to fulfill our relational requirements or we can just let go of our unrealistic expectations.  Until you are enlightened, you are crazy, like a drunkard, reactively careening from craving to ignorance to hatred.

Why wouldn't sangha be messy, difficult, challenging?  Disillusionment means getting a closer connection to reality, and while it might be painful, it's a good pain, a growing pain.

So I tell myself, dream away, they are important, but also understand what a dream really is.  Dreams are potential guiding wishes that you can work towards, point out our values and give us hope, not disconnections from reality to prop up a fragile ego.

Even though a retreat is more supportive conditions for going deeper, that doesn't mean there won't be problems and snafu.  Sometimes finding my barriers to equanimity is as important, part of the process of cultivating equanimity.  I do feel the effects of the Brahma Viharas over a 3 day weekend retreat.  

Brahma Viharas

I'm off to a retreat at Aryaloka.  Over the winter of 2001/2002, I went on a Brahma Viharas retreat for a week that blew my mind.  Ten years later I'm going on a weekend retreat for outlying sanghas.  In my meditation this morning, I realized how excited I am to meet two new people I don't know yet.  New York City has some people in wide orbits, and I'm one of them because I work on Monday night, so I go to one or two sangha nights a year, and I go to a practice day about once a quarter.  So I don't get to know everyone like I used to, when I would sub for Vajra when he went away in the beginners class, or sangha night or practice days.  So I'm excited to meet someone from NYC who has caught the Dharma through TBC.  I'm also excited to be on a Brahma Viharas retreat, with it's near and far enemies, for metta, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity.  Equanimity is more of an insight practice.  On the retreat I went on we meditated 6 times a day, starting with mindfulness of breathing, the 4 Brahma Viharas and then just sitting--and a puja.  I fell in love with pujas, reading Ritual and Devotion, and made my first offering to the shrine.  Anyway, I'm very excited, and after 10 years of practice, I still get very excited for retreat.

(My computer died, so promised writings projects have had a big setback.)

Letters to Dinoo

Dear Dinoo by Sangharakshita
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I have read about 30+ Sangharakshita books.  One is an all time world classic:  A Survey Of Buddhism.  One is probably a modern sutta:  The Essential Sangharakshita.  And then there are a bunch of books I can keep reading over and over again for the rest of my life.  Know Your Mind comes to mind.  And The Three Jewels.  Some books are indispensable:  Ten Pillars.  Vision and Transformation is amazing.  The book created from his talk on the Sutra of the Golden Light, is...  I'm trying to think of lofty terms.  I'd actually have to put that with the Survey, The Essential and Know Your Mind.  This man is a genius, but genius implies intellectual skill.  He is so much more than a genius, he is kaboom.  He blows it all up--the depth and breadth of his thinking is beyond words.

Two of his books I couldn't get through.  I would put this book higher than those, but the author himself doesn't see an audience beyond the Triratna community, which is probably why it was printed by ibis  Why wouldn't Windhorse publish it?  It would never ever make money.  Thus the lovely print on demand world.  Wow.

I did think a lot about letters, and I wrote one today.  I wish his letters in this book weren't full of travel planning.  OK, the dude traveled a lot, he was in demand.  He went on preaching tours in India, for goodness sake.  I've read the over a thousand pages of his memoirs.  He went forth.  He gave everything away and went forth from his home, his possessions, his family.  Think about it.  No, think about it.  You're joking right?  That's not thinking about it.  Think about it.  He did it.

A lovely woman gave me this book and I really appreciate that.


View all my reviews

watched this video today

I'm reading his book on patience, so I thought it would be interesting to take a gander at him.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Possessions

Reading the wonderful Essential Sangharakshita, there's the pithy comment, that renunciation is not about giving up, but about growing up.  I did a review of possessions with my friend.

I've got way too many books.  I put a lot on paperbackbookswap.com but they're not being taken.  I am building up my sons' library, and I'm keeping most of my books, but I continually scan through to weed out books I'm unlikely to reread nor need as reference.  I like it when I was going to social work school, and I would take a backpack of books to pay for my lunch.  It was a sad day when at the Strand, they didn't want the books I was offering.

I have a gas guzzling car, which someone gave me, in aid of the family.  But I think I could eventually move towards a more modest car, and walk to work more, bike or take public transport.  Whether I get rid of the car or not, I can use it less.

I really like my computer and smart phone, but they might dissipate some energy.  I think I'm more likely to get a basic phone instead of smart phone when my phone dies.

I've moved a lot recently and finally settled into a place I expect to live in till my young sons go off to college, so I have divested myself of a lot of objects.  I want to make sure I don't really accumulate more, as you do when you settle.  I do actually have space, it's not cluttered yet.

I remember an order member talking about divesting himself of things.  He would go back out to the garbage can and take something back, he did it very gently with himself.

My friend talked about kitchen stuff.  I think if you like to cook, a well stocked kitchen is important.  And cooking is not only a gift you give to yourself, but also to others.  And if you're cooking vegetarian and healthy, it's not just about pleasure, and you have to eat.

So, while I only put one book to be swapped, I think it's a good conversation to have.  How can I pare down my existence and simplify?  I look where there's room for improvements, soft spots in my ideas, and work towards growing up.  It's a work in progress.

And applying it to children isn't always easy.  I'm collecting board games and books for them.  Since I felt deprived about video games, I'm trying not to deprive them with those.

Camping equipment is also something I want to collect.

I have an informal moratorium on buying new things.  Do I get rid of 2 books for every book I bring into the house?  Things to think about.

And it's not just thinking, follow through is important too, but also gentleness and persistance.

vulnerability is beautiful

This isn't exactly the Dharma, but it is about barriers to relating to people, and I see that as connected to the sangha jewel because we have to relate to others in the sangha, and removing barriers to that is always good.  Samvega means "the ability to be moved by the Dharma."  I think I feel samvega a bit with this video.

Dreams

I was reading in Nanamoli's The Life of the Buddha (p.22) that the Buddha had 5 dreams before he became enlightened.  I'm going to present the dream, my thoughts in parenthesis, and what the text makes of it.

1.  Laying all over the Indian subcontinent, feet in the south, hands in each ocean and head on the pillow of the himalayans.

(Bigger than Gulliver's Travels, does it predict the spread of Buddhism?  What a weird thing to be so huge.  The body as a subcontinent.  A pure land.)

The text says it foretells his enlightenment.

2.  A "creeper" grew out of his belly botton and touched the clouds.

(I'm guessing that's a vine.  Or umbilical chord?  Up to the clouds--elevating, transcendent.  He's going to nourish us with his umbilical chord?)

The text says it foretells the noble 8 fold path.

3.  White grubs with black heads crawled and covered him from his feet to his knees.

(Yikes!  Sounds like an anxiety dream to me, but he's probably relaxed.  Later when he wonders of anyone can get the Dharma, he doesn't remember this premonition?  Why are the heads black?  Maybe nobody can be as pure as the Buddha?)

The text says it foretells people joining his sangha, people would go for to him.

4.  Four birds of different colors come and alight on his feet, and they call become white.

(Purity theme, birds are ancient dinosaurs.  I love feathers.  When we talk about caste, at first I was afraid this was in support of the caste system, but then they all turned the same white, seems like he wants to transcend the caste system, which indeed he did.  I can't stand the caste system.  Jai Bhim!)

The text says all 4 castes can become enlightened.  What about the casteless?  Perhaps that didn't exist then?

5.  He walked up a huge pile of dirt and didn't get dirty.

(Nice.  Not to be buffeted by the worldly winds.  To still be in the world, but not sucked into the undertow.  I like that one.  But in a way, I want the Boddhisattva to get dirty, in a way.  Do themes and images of purity lead to splitting and the negative sense of spirituality, that is alienated from the earth and our bodies?  If you don't get too literal, it's a lovely image.)

"...the perfect one would obtain the requisites of robes, alms food, abode and medicine, and yet he would use them without greed or delusion or clinging, perceiving their dangers and understanding their purpose."

(cool.)

That's it.

I had a dream last night, I was showing a friend from India around a Buddhist center.  I hope to begin a sitting group in a couple months, and I'm excited.  Soon I will begin gathering cushions, and soon I will begin advertising the group, in my neighborhood.  I have set a starting date and a schedule for the roll out plan.  I have developed an action plan.